A Memorial Well in Rwanda

My expectations for attending a genocide conference in the late days of the summer of 2012 were to increase my knowledge base for my classroom content area and to acquire continuing ed hours. Little did I know that my heart would be ravaged and new directions for my life would be formed that would take me across oceans and rearrange the priorities of my thinking, teaching, and living.

I met Immaculee Mukantaganira, a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda at that conference. I met world history and all of its conflicts merging in one soul sitting across the table from me. I found new parts of myself. About a million people were killed in just 100 days. Her losses during the genocide are too many to detail here, but they include the deaths of her family members, including her husband and her two daughters of 5 and 3 years.

I know it is not good to turn on the news and to hear all of the tragic events of the day only to turn off the tv so that I can enjoy my next meal and forget what I have just seen. Worse yet is to meet a woman living the story and to simply say thank-you and get back to my American life.

So I decided to do something.

I decided to teach differently. I decided to go to Rwanda and to take my daughter and a friend to show them the truth and the real people affected. And I decided to do something for Rwandans who continue to seek justice and reconciliation--not only in wrongs being righted-- but the most basic justice of being able to draw water from the otherwise inhospitable earth so that they can get on with hope, healing and progress.

I want to do this in a way that is meaningful to those who live in struggle, but particularly in a way that honors those Immaculee lost. Their merciless death has inspired my new priorities.

My goal is to raise enough money to build a well in Rwanda to honor the memory of Clarisse and Raissa. My intent is to have their names inscribed on this well as a lasting reminder of the beauty of their short lives which continue to nourish mine.

Building a well in Rwanda in the names of Clarisse and Raissa accomplishes several things: It acknowledges the lives of two little girls whose stories were cut short, but yet still shine light to those who remember them; it makes a statement that life,no matter how short, matters; it affords us an opportunity to participate in the healing and development of a wounded country; It reminds us that while we remain thirsty, Clarisse and Raissa thirst no more; and finally, it is a place for Immaculee to remember, to grieve, to heal and to celebrate.

Thank you and God bless.